Since Frankie’s death, the chair has gotten little use. The house is also a lot quieter without Frankie and Chez yelling at each other all of the time. Chez must be in the acceptance phase of coping with death because he’s not looking for Frankie anymore.

He wasn’t doing well the evenings before his death. Greg thought he wasn’t going to even make it through the night. He didn’t want to eat and he didn’t attempt to go on walks. He was lethargic, pale, breathing hard. On the evening of the 29th he didn’t want to eat anything and on the morning of the 30th he didn’t eat and refused to eat his tasty pill pockets.

We call around to find a vet who could come over an do an at home euthanasia. We found a doc willing to come out at 5pm. At around 2pm Greg called me at work and said I should probably come home now because he thought Frankie was dying right then. I came home, but the Franken was will alive. Doc came out at around 5:15pm and said he was in heart failure. The euth was quick and easy and put Frankie at rest.

Frankie was such a special guy. We miss him. Last night his arch enemy Chez was wandering around looking for Frankie. Chez and Frankie liked to growl at eachother. Blind Chez would seek out Frankie and make Frankie move. Chester stayed outside most of the night (which is unusual), and Nutok was sad. We’re all sad. Death fucking sucks.

So this really sucks. There’s nothing we can do for Frankie , except wait for his death. I hate death. I hate having to deal with all the deaths of my best friends. Frankie is such a terrific guy and has been such a good friend. Right now he’s on Prednisone and Doxycycline. We just started Terbutaline today. It’s really for asthma and other breathing disorders, but it increases the heart rate, and right now, that’s the goal. Doc said it would cost around $3000 for a doggie pacemaker. We’d have to travel to Seattle. I think it would be too much stress on Frankie, and to tell you the truth, I’m not sure if he’s going to make it through the night. I tried to take his heart rate and it’s really slow and irregular– I’m not even sure what I hear. I listened to Bruno’s heart beat to compare. Bruno has a steady healthy beat of around 100bpm– lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, etc. Frankie’s heart beat is just whacked. It’s lower than 50 right now.  I don’t hear any lub, just a loud dub. He’s breathing hard. He’s very pale.

Dutchess

Yeah, I know Dutchess is spelled incorrectly– but I like it like that. Brought Dutchy to the vet last weekend due to a limp. The doc spotted her distended abdomen. Either she has bad gas or cancer. We’re guessing cancer since she already had two malignant tumors removed from her neck. She has a lump on one of her nipples. Regarding the limp, doc thought she has some type of shoulder injury. Regarding the bloat, we’ve put her on metronidazole. If the bloat/gas doesn’t clear up then it’s all downhill from here. Unlike Frankie, Dutchy is still interested in eating and going on walks. Boths dogs are quite lethargic. Frank only ate a bit of his breakfast and a bit of his dinner. He didn’t even try to go on a walk tonight.

:(

We brought him to the vet with his sister Stubby. Ex-rays showed he had some type of foreign body in his stomach, but it didn’t look like an obstruction. This is the first time ever that we actually saw something in an ex-ray of a dogs’ stomach. Normally an ex-ray is taken and then we hear, “we’ll the ex-ray is inconclusive.” This time we saw the little chunks of whatever just hanging out in his stomach. The vet surmised that it was either pieces of bone or plastic. The doc also noted arthritis in his back.

She gave him a shot of buprenorphine for pain and recommended tramadol if he appeared painful in the upcoming days. She also gave us Cerenia (I’ve never heard of this before), which is an anti-nausea drug for dogs. We switched his food temporarily to Hills w/d and are giving him some canned pumpkin with his canned food.

He showed immediate improvement the next day, however, he still seems a little glum. With 11 dogs living inside, it’s difficult to determine who’s poop is who’s (no– they don’t poop in the house, we have a dog door and they poop outside, usually); and we haven’t identified any foreign objects in any poop, so we aren’t sure if whatever is in his tummy has actually passed.

Stubby also visited the vet. Stubby has been randomly yelping and we can’t figure out where the pain is coming from. The vet couldn’t figure it out either and recommended we continue to give her rimadyl and not take her on walks. She thought it was possible neck pain. The morning after her vet visit, Stubby woke up in a lot of pain and jumped on the bed where she tensed her entire body and shook for a couple of minutes. We’ll give her another week and if she’s still exhibiting the same symptoms we’ll bring her back in. Stinkypup diagnosis is she has an abscess we can’t see, or she’s having arthritic pain.

Update June 10 (Greg): He’s feeling better. Maybe it was all a ploy to get canned food for a week. There was no sign of what was stuck in his gut.

Rocket (9 years old) said he prefers not to run at all, due to overheating and possible laryngeal paralysis, but if it’s cold enough (below zero), he’ll consider running with the Z team on a four mile run.

Chester announced that at ten years old, he’s just not up to twenty mile runs and that he’d rather stay home and eat what he can find in the dog yard. Like Rocket, he said he will consider short four-to-seven mile runs.

After a two year retirement, Frankie (9 years old), said he would like to run in lead with his former girlfriend Monkey-Tail on four mile runs. He said although he has a sore back, he needs to get out and about, and that the team needs a strong leader like him.  As long as he can stay inside and take over the couch, he’s happy to run. We’re glad to have him back on the team.

When we woke up, Sam and Frankie were still gone.  Greg took the gang for a morning walk, and Frankie caught up with them on their way home. Frankie wasn’t very muddy, and didn’t look too wet. We were waiting for Sam to come running home, but she didn’t. We spent all day Sat. looking for her. We looked for her on the field, on some of the trails, on some of the trails that aren’t trails, on the road, at the pound, up the block, down the block, here and there. Still no Sam. Sunday, we repeated our hunt for her. Note, Sat. & Sun. were met with bouts of hard rainfall. Still no Sam.

I checked my StinkyPup blog and she,  Chester, Bruno and Stubby disappeared in 2007.  Stubby came back within the hour, Bruno within 7 hours (and was really tired), Chester within around 16 hours, and Sam 52 hours. I suppose there is still some hope that she returns home. Both Wild and Sugar were found at around mile 22 after one week. Dutchess was found at mile 22 after a couple of days.

What worries me are the traps, bears, wolves, and moose. Rattles was missing for three days and some folks found him in a trap. Rattles didn’t let us know where he was when we were basically right next to him.

So, I guess I’ll just have to wait and see. I’m very sad and miss her so much.

Sunday night he figured out how to jump over a gate, sort of squeezing between the gap over the gate closure, where the gate doesn’t quite meet the fence. I was tending to the yard, and realized that Frankie was running around in the sled dog yard, instead of barking from the adjacent pet dog yard. I put him back, then he reappeared. I then put him back, and blocked one of the gates.

A few minutes later, there was a horrendous barking and howling, from another of the gates. Frankie had tried to jump through, and got stuck with his waist between the fence and the gate, suspended over the gate latch and a t-post, about 4 feet in the air. To make matters worse, Chez was biting his ass and feet, from the other side of the fence.

I ran to help, and started to try to lift Frankie from his tight spot. But he bit me — hard! On the hand. I backed off, managed to reach around and shoo Chez away, and adjusted Frankie’s rear feet so he wasn’t quite so stuck. He calmed down a bit, and then let me lift him out. He promptly ran through the dog yard, opened the gate at the other end (it wasn’t secured, since Frankie is the only one who ever opens the gate, and he was supposed to be in the other yard), and ran up the back porch to be let in by Ilana.

Later, we discovered that Frankie had impaled himself on the t-post, and needed another set of stitches. My next yard project will be to figure out how to add a little more fencing, to make it impossible to jump through the gap that Frankie found.

Last year, Frankie had five of his teeth pulled. The vet said he had cavities (different from human cavities), which is unusual for dogs.

This July, Frankie’s breath was smelling really bad–worse than dead fish mixed with poop.  We brought him to a vet who specialized in canine dentistry.  Besides having cavities, his bone was reabsorbing his teeth, and he had exposed rotting bone in the back of his mouth.

Frankie ended up getting all but 6 of his teeth pulled!

Franken-Teeth - July 2009

Nutok’s Teeth

While Nutok was getting stitched up at the vet from her unsuccessful attack on Monkey, the vet noticed she had a fractured tooth and let us know we should get it taken care of.  We brought Nutok to the same vet as Frankie (the vet who specializes in dentistry).  What we thought was going to be a straight forward procedure of removing one tooth turned in to a longer procedure that involved removing 8 teeth! She’s still in the recovery phase and has a checkup next week.

Nutok's Teeth

King Neptune’s Raw Hide

For the last several years, Neptune has been vomiting his dinner once a month and appeared to have tummy problems every now and then. I brought him to the vet and was told to give him pumpkin…and that as long as things were going in one end and coming out the other, and occasional vomit is okay.

In August 2009, he seemed to be getting worse. He would vomit 3-4x a week, seemed lethargic, not his usually self, and he was loosing weight. Turns out Neptune had a small piece of rawhide (we think) floating around in his stomach. Every now and then it would block the path from the stomach to the intestines, thus causing him to vomit.

The rawhide was surgically removed from Neptune’s stomach. The vet thought the rawhide had been in his stomach for a while!

Rawhide removed from Neptune's stomach (left) compared to a quarter (right) to show size.